An LCD Projector For This English Teacher

Greetings!

Since I only know about five people in Hood’s Little-Black-Book-of-a-contact-list, the polite thing to do would be to introduce myself before asking for your money: I’m Stephen, I graduated in 2000, and I teach English at a high school in New York City.  I won’t be teaching Ulysses, or Dalloway, or anything remotely Hoodian this year, but I am following his example by asking you to donate to a good cause, namely, my classroom.  And I’m not asking for much: a large number of $5-$10 donations would help me to reach my goal of getting an LCD projector for my class (although larger donations by those able to make them are perfectly welcome, too!).

Here’s the deal.  A few months back I submitted a proposal to DonorsChoose, which is a site that links teachers with private donors.  The way it works, in a nutshell, is that a teacher writes a grant proposal, then philanthropic souls peruse the proposals and donate money to those projects they deem most worthy.  I tried this out last year and an anonymous donor funded my start-up library for my remedial reading class within 48 hours.  This year I decided to try for something bigger — an LCD projector — that I’ll use to deliver lessons, have students give powerpoint presentations and generally impress with their technological savvy, etc.  As I describe in the proposal, it’s an instrument that I have used often in the past, but my school only has one projector per academic department, so quite often there’s a battle to get your hands on it.  I’m hoping to acquire one that will remain in my classroom to be used almost daily.  When I wrote the grant in April, I thought it would be funded quickly and anonymously like the last one, but — probably due to the larger cost — anonymous donors have gravitated towards the smaller projects that they can fund in one donation.  So this time around I’m turning to my nearest and dearest folks (and strangers with whom I share a steadfast bond to a remarkable professor) with the hope that several smaller donations will get this thing funded before school begins next month.    

Stephen